African Psycho
Page 10
Indeed, what revolts me most as far as knives are concerned is the number of murders committed with them. Our city’s news items attest to this fact. Only complete imbeciles still operate with this means. More generally, the weapons I place under this heading include: axes, machetes, hoes, assagai, paper-cutters like in the Guy des Cars novel, rakes, spades and pickaxes. In addition, in the city, men and women of Bembé ethnicity are famous for resorting to knives at the least little thing. The anecdote most often told is one about the referee Kimpolo, an old Bembé man nevertheless appreciated for his impartial refereeing of soccer games between the small teams of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot. The old man always hides a penknife in the back pocket of his shorts. These games often end in fights in which the man with the whistle is taken to task. Neither team accepts the opposite team’s goal, and when the referee says the goal is good, they go after him. Now the inhabitants of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot have decreed that knives are Bembés’ favorite weapons. At it happens, I am not Bembé…
Knives? I don’t deny their effectiveness. Back when I was still reading, I saw that several famous authors let their characters use them. I am thinking especially of Camus’s Arab in The Stranger. Okay, that’s another story altogether. It’s true that the Arab indeed pulled out his knife, but did he kill the narrator with it? No, it was the narrator, rather, who used a pistol! Better yet, he fired four times on an already inert body!
I also own a chainsaw. As frightful as it may be in and of itself, it makes me think immediately of the movies, of Scarface, a film that played for six months at the Duo, and that I saw twenty-seven times in matinees, thirty-three times in the evening. I watched it from from beginning to end without my eyes ever leaving the screen for one second. I know the dialogue by heart.
However, committing murder is not like acting in a movie.
2.
In the final analysis, it’s not that I don’t know what I want, but there’s something about firearms that bothers me. Why foreshorten the pleasure of killing by shooting your victim in one go? What kind of work is that? Where are we going? Am I such a cretin that I would do that, no matter what my idol Angoualima thinks of me? Would such a method allow me to enjoy a full page in our country’s dailies and those of the country over there?
It’s true that one of the characteristics of a shot is that it resounds. Except, of course, when the weapon has been equipped with a silencer. All that noise for an operation that could be accomplished another way, without waking the neighbors I neither know nor care to know?
I am convinced that pistols, guns, rifles and all things resembling the above are more interesting to the feebleminded, the weekend cuckolds or those who want to kill themselves. This being said in complete humility, despite the clumsiness I have demonstrated until now, I am not feebleminded, I haven’t been cheated on by a woman over the weekend and I haven’t reached the point where I would kill myself. I love life and I would do anything to keep it, even by being the worst scoundrel on earth, even if it entails dying after a long illness as they say in our radio stations’ death announcements, radio stations that can’t manage to talk about real facts.
I am in possession of all my faculties and I can tell what is good for me from what isn’t. Had my childhood been that of a wealthy scion, I can assure you I would have refused toy guns. I have noticed that, in our city, kids show them off and imagine they’re in a movie instead of playing rag-ball like in my childhood. In fact these brats are so ridiculous that it would be preferable if they entertained themselves with their parents’ table knives. That would suit them better.
In any case, I don’t know who invented the pistol. Probably a coward who had nothing between his legs and feared face-to-face confrontation. Pistols are for chickens. One should be ashamed to use them. The Great Master would share my opinion…
My aversion to firearms may seem paradoxical coming from someone who acknowledges a kinship with the underworld. And so what? I do as I please.
In contrast to the knife, with which you can at least cut up meat that’s on the table, as soon as you see a firearm, my God, you know right away that it’s meant to kill in the most expeditious manner possible. Bang! Bang! Bang! And that’s that. The victim lies on the ground, in a pool of blood, like in detective novels where there’s got to be a corpse for an investigation to begin and the murderer to be found in the last pages. I said a few moments ago that committing a crime is not like acting in a movie. Murder is not like writing a detective novel either. What I must accomplish soon is something concrete and more serious than what is being written in fiction to entertain readers, as if the latter had no other occupation than polluting their eyesight with words from stories that aren’t even true…
What also throws me, as far as firearms are concerned, is that one of my clients, a former policeman, a nice guy who entrusted his car to me for repairs, told me that the person who takes the bullet doesn’t hear the detonation, and that if that person hears it means that he or she isn’t dead but just wounded. Okay, I haven’t checked all this, but I trust my client, he’s handled weapons for years. He doesn’t look like he would bullshit me, and in any case, to what end? He’s someone who’s served the city with devotion and he never misses an opportunity to recite the names of the offenders he put behind bars for a decent period of time. Yes, he’s already shot someone. Yes, he’s already killed, but he was under cover of the law. He’s one of the protected criminals, and they’re given a uniform for this, to warn those who think that cops’ guns are loaded with blank bullets that such is not the case, that these are real bullets that can kill, to tell these unbelievers that if they are shot there won’t be anything after, just like there’s nothing after when you put down a rabid pet or a wild beast that’s come to disturb the population’s peace and quiet. For people in uniform, guys like us are wild animals, rabid beasts to be shot without warning.
That’s all.
Consequently, if I am to put an end to Germaine’s days with a firearm, I have to get used to the idea that she wouldn’t hear the detonation and that the only fear she’d feel would be to see the weapon that I would be pointing in her directions.
It’s out of the question of course. I will leave this to gangsters, to armed-robbery specialists from the center of town, and to characters in westerns. These villains think they’re the masters of the world just because they can master a firearm.
In truth, I have never touched a pistol, a rifle or a hunting gun. As a matter of fact I don’t how these contraptions work. I guess you have to press somewhere, right at the bottom, in the little space designed for you to slip your index finger. But given my large hands, could my index manage to get into this needle hole? I figure you probably need a long and slender index finger that can get in easily.
Other than that distant night when I caught a glimpse of Master Fernandes Quiroga’s gun in a drawer in his office while rummaging through his stuff, the only time I have really seen firearms up close was last week. I wanted to put my mind at ease and quell the doubts that were haunting me as far as the use of such a weapon was concerned. I went to the center of town and stopped in front of the shop of the only gunsmith in our urban area. There were all kinds of weapons there. Some were crafted and had such detail from butt to barrel that I thought the person who died from one of its bullets would go straight to Heaven. Those who manufacture these noisy toys are really consummate sadists. They take days, perhaps entire months, to embellish a tool whose end is killing. Is it the weapon’s particular aesthetics or the manner in which the killing is done that gives the criminal gesture, whatever it may be, all of its beauty? Seeing how these Machiavellian manufacturers take pains to overdecorate pistols and guns, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear one day that someone had invented poisons that taste like mango or pineapple, poisons that can be bought in a pharmacy upon presentation of a prescription. If you’re going to poison someone, you might as well send them into the next world with the sweet taste of death!
A man as skinny as a framing nail came in at the same time and asked the shopkeeper if the weapon he had ordered a month ago had arrived. No, it hasn’t arrived, if you want I can offer you another one, it’s a new shipment, this weapon is all the rage in France, in England, in Papua-New Guinea, thanks to the precision of its aim, its adjustable targeting, its infrared system, it’s easy to handle, it’s light, it’s easy to maintain, see for yourself, what do you mean you only trust a Winchester or a Beretta, you are wrong sir, all this is out of date, you have to follow the evolution of technology, in the old days you had to struggle to load a weapon, now everything’s ready in the blink of an eye, all you have to do is aim and shoot, and if I’m not mistaken, even a blind man can use this weapon…
Then I heard them mention something about an authorization, blah, blah, blah. So in addition, you need to have an authorization in order to own a weapon! Any talk of authorization means registering one’s identity somewhere. Why not for knives also? Did our ancestors register their poisonous assagai? Is it the police who want this? So in addition to everything, you have to help these people know who owns what weapon and where that person lives? If I understand correctly, those who are on file are then the first ones to be suspected when a detonation rips through the city? Where are we going? No, not a firearm. When I think that you need to know how to aim first and not let yourself be frightened by the deflagration, how can I opt for this solution?
I can still remember that Angoualima had stolen weapons and ammunitions from several of this city’s precincts. How can we explain that he never used them? It was because the Great Master had an aversion to these weapons. Because he thought they meant utter cowardice. Killing is all well and good, but you have to let your victim at least have the illusion of believing that he’ll be able to escape death. With gun a pointed in his direction, what chance would he have? He wouldn’t even try to flee anymore, that bullet would catch him in the back.
No, personally, I don’t want any of that.
3.
I now know that it’s no use looking for the most perfect way to kill Germaine. This is why I have put aside this practical aspect, which was beginning to irritate me. I will kill her eventually. The pleasure I feel when I think that I don’t know how I will proceed is beyond all explanation. In fact the question I’m always asking myself is the following:
What death would I not like to suffer myself, should I be so lucky as to be able to choose one?
It is, above all, because I cannot answer this question that I tell myself that what is interesting in death is that, except for those who kill themselves like the Great Master Angoualima, no one can predict what his own will be like. And we are convinced that someone else’s death will always be crueler than ours. We hang on to the idea that we will die a nice and quiet death during a sickly sweet sleep, and that the angels will carry us on their wings to Heaven’s doors. As a matter of fact, there are periods when the idea of eternity makes its way into our minds. Death seems to us distant and foreign. We tell ourselves that we have time to accomplish everything. And then the hearse driving by, the neighbor’s death, the crime we hear about on the radio or read about in the newspaper remind us of our condition as a passenger on Earth…
If I had kept on trying one scenario after another, kept on losing myself in the choice of the appropriate weapon, to this day I would never have made up my mind and would still be postponing my gesture indefinitely. There is a time for reflection. There is a time to get on with it. The main thing is that, when I am face-to-face with her, Germaine suspects nothing. That she settles in the sofa bed, that I serve her a Heineken and ask her how her workday went in the streets of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot. Since she is very chatty, I’m sure she will say the same thing. My day went well, darling, I had a lot of work, Sunday is shithead day, and I don’t know why but that’s the way it is, I got this guy, a so-called head of a corporation, and it was unbearable with his thing breaking down, and me, you know, I swore to you on my mother’s and on my father’s graves in the country over there, yes I swore to you that I would no longer put my clients’ things in my mouth given that I kiss you with the same mouth, I told the old fart this, and he pulled out a wad of new bank notes, so I put a little bit in anyway, but really a tiny little bit of his little thing in my mouth, and you know what, the old fart claimed that I wasn’t doing it any better than a girl from Head-of-Negroes Street, that I was hurting him with my teeth, that my head was someplace else, that if this was the way it was going to be he would pay me half price, and me I almost bit his little thing, and so he got dressed, threw the wad of bank notes on the ground, and all evening it was like that, nightmares, clients with problems, actually there was also this other one, I have to talk to you about this one because he’s always where I expect him least, I have to talk to you about him, about this railroad ticket collector, pot-bellied, with a toothbrush-shaped mustache, hair coming out of his ears, smelling of sweat, this guy who always calls me all kinds of names, threatens me if I don’t bark while he’s on me, and today I barked woof! woof! woof! and he said he wanted to hear a real Alsatian or bulldog barking, not a kitten meowing, he slapped me and I screamed, and he came, and he didn’t even pay me, the idiot, I’ll get him eventually, if I see him again, I’ll scratch his face, as a matter of fact I’m going to give his description to my girlfriends, and we’ll see if he’ll still be able to get any in this neighborhood, we’ll put him on the blacklist, yes we have a list for this, we give each other instructions, we tell each other: this one, you can’t accept him anymore, this one, you have to send him packing, this one, he has to pay before he even gets undressed, this one, you can’t agree to go to his house, yes we have people like that we call “this one,” and so this railroad man, we’ll tell him to go wipe his ass with his bank notes, we’ll all denounce him, and he won’t have the courage to show his face, which looks like a guava that’s been smashed in the streets, and if he insists, the youth of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot will teach him a lesson, I’ve had it, I’m tired of all this…
She will in turn ask me what I did with my day. Will I answer: Darling, I forgot to tell you that just a week ago I put a broad-bladed knife in the furnace to kill you tonight, but in the end I found this so ridiculous that I had to give up, and sometime, trust me, I will gratify you with a beautiful death, I am going to free you from your daily troubles, there will no longer be people you call “this one,” there won’t be any old fart head of a corporation with breakdowns of his thing, or any pot-bellied railroad ticket collector who asks you to bark woof! woof! woof! like an Alsatian or a bulldog, yes I will kill you and don’t resent me if up to this day I haven’t followed through, it’s not easy for everyone, you have to make do with what’s close at hand…
No, I will answer as I usually do. It’s easy for a workman to explain how he fills his hours.
So I’m not going to beat around the bush. Looking serious, I will say: I stayed in my workshop, lately I’ve been so swamped with work that I don’t have a minute to myself to smoke a Camel, all clients are tyrants, they break their cars and want them fixed with the wave of a magic wand, what kind of bullshit is this, am I the one telling them to bang up their jalopies, actually, for example this morning, a client brought in a vehicle, or rather what was left of it, that I have to get back into shape in the next two weeks, if you have time, go take a stroll around the workshop, and you’ll see the damage, I don’t know where to start, apparently it was a serious accident near the Kassaï roundabout, my client was driving at breakneck speed and collided with a parked truck in Mongo-Beti Street, it’s a crazy story, he himself doesn’t know how he ended up outside the main thoroughfare to crash into a parked vehicle, he got out of it okay, the client, he told me stories about witch doctors, supposedly his uncle is jealous of his car and it’s because he got himself good protection by going to a real witch doctor that he got out of it without a scratch, the engine is not damaged too much, and since I dabble in mechanics a little, I’ll try and see what I can do for him, but it’s going to cost him dearly, I warned him, do you realize that I have to fix the engine first, then do the sheet-iron and even the paint over…
In short, everyday blather.
4.
I met Germaine a month ago at the Open Air restaurant on the Left Bank. I can still picture to this day the moment I knew she was the one I would kill.
Open Air looks like all the restaurants found in abundance in He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot: bamboo tables in an immense courtyard stretching to the edge of the street, with old loudspeakers blasting music that can pierce the eardrums of clients and passersby. The smoke clouds the place in general indifference. People scream with laughter, they get up and dance in a corner. Cars park out front and drivers emerge, often accompanied by their latest female conquests.